Why Soma Ayurveda | Melbourne

Nearly three decades in the body's language.

My relationship with the healing arts began way back in the mid 80’s when I did work experience with a Naturopath at the Newton’s Pharmacy, one of the oldest recognised Homeopathic clinics in Australia.

I became qualified in Remedial Massage in 1996 and then Herbal medicine. Aromatherapy. Yoga. Each thread deepening my understanding of the same essential truth — that the body is not a problem to be solved. It is a living system with its own intelligence, its own timing, its own wisdom.

For over twenty years I worked across these modalities, holding space for women navigating stress, depletion, chronic pain, disconnection from themselves. The work was meaningful. But I was burned out..

THE TURNING POINT · 2016

One treatment. Everything shifted.

In 2016, I received my first Abhyanga massage. I didn't know what to expect. It was profound. Just because of the technique, but because of the loving intention of healing through the practice itself. rooted in 5,000 years of refined knowledge about the nervous system, the tissues, the rhythms of the body and the seasons it lives inside.

What happened in that first session was not dramatic. It was quiet. My nervous system, which had been running at a low hum of vigilance for longer than I could remember, simply… stopped. Not through force or intervention. Through nourishment. Warm oil, unhurried hands, a quality of presence that said: there is nowhere to be but here.

I left that session and felt different in my body for days. Not just relaxed — reorganised. Like something that had been slightly out of alignment for years had come to rest.

The effects rippled outward in ways I hadn't anticipated. My sleep changed. My relationship to stress changed. The way I moved through daily life changed. I became quieter inside, more able to feel the thread of my own life rather than just manage it.

I had spent years helping other women reconnect with their bodies. Abhyanga did that for me. It felt like returning to something I didn't know I'd left.

Going deeper into the source.

After that experience I knew I needed to understand this tradition properly — not as a wellness trend, but in its full depth. I began formal study in Ayurveda, immersing myself in the classical texts and the philosophy that underpins them.

SHRI KALI ASHRAM

Ayurvedic studies in the classical tradition

Training at Shri Kali Ashram grounded me in Ayurveda's foundational principles — the doshas, the dhatus, the relationship between seasonal rhythms and the body's interior landscape. Study here was not academic. It was embodied. We lived what we learned.

DR. VASANT LAD

Studies with one of Ayurveda's foremost teachers

Studying with Dr. Vasant Lad — widely regarded as one of the most authoritative Ayurvedic physicians in the world — refined my understanding of how Ayurveda reads the body. His teachings on marma therapy, constitution, and the subtlety of Vata, Pitta and Kapha in the lived experience of women deepened everything I had learned.

WEAVING IT TOGETHER

Twenty-nine years becoming one practice

Classical Ayurvedic bodywork brought together every strand of my path — the hands-on precision of massage therapy, the plant intelligence of herbal medicine, the breath and body awareness of yoga, the aromatic medicine of oils. It wasn't a departure from what I had spent my life learning. It was where everything arrived.

WHY SOMA

A studio built from lived knowledge.

Soma exists because I know what Abhyanga does when it's done with depth, with oil chosen for your constitution, with unhurried hands and a quality of presence that allows the nervous system to fully let go.

I know it not only from two decades of professional practice, but from my own body — from what shifted in me when I finally received this work, and how it changed the ground I stood on.

The women who come to Soma are often depleted in the specific way modern life depletes women: over-stimulated, over-giving, under-nourished, estranged from the quieter signals of their own bodies. Some arrive knowing what they need. Some arrive just knowing something is missing.

Ayurveda has a word — sneha — that means both oil and love. It is not a coincidence.

The treatments at Soma are classical — grounded in a tradition that understood the nervous system long before neuroscience gave it a name. They are also personal. Every session begins with listening, and moves from there.

This is the work I was always moving toward. I am glad to offer it to you.